[akst]

I think their point was the meaning of multi-words isn't the result of structure or word order, such as many idioms for example aren't interpreted literally or their grammar isn't too important.

But this is also academia they want to have evidence behind claims even if they feel intuitive. Like in the social sciences you'll have models and theories that are largely true in a lot of cases, but fail to explain variance from the models. The constructivist and whatever stuff sounds like one of those larger models and they are pointing out where it falls short, not to entirely invalidate it but to show the model has limitations.

I have a feeling the authors are well aware they aren't the first people to consider this, but they did leg work to provide some empirical evidence about the claim. Which is something you want to have in challenging the orthodoxy of a field. Entirely possible they're working on a larger piece of work but they're being asked to demonstrate this fact which this larger piece of work rests on. But I'm largely speculating there.

> On top of that, the authors seem to think that any evidence for the importance of linear sequencing is somehow evidence against the existence of hierarchical structure

The way I see it if you can demonstrate comprehension in the absence of this structure, I think you can make the case that it is optional and therefore may not rely on it. Which is a different claim from it benefits in no way whatsoever, which I don't think their evidence necessarily challenges (based on my read)

My view is when a language depends a lot on complex grammar what's happening is its trying resolve ambiguity, but languages can address this problem a number of ways. In languages like Russian they handle more of this ambiguity in inflection (and many non-English indo-european languages), in tonal languages to some extent tone creates a greater possible combination of sounds which could provide other ways of resolving ambiguity. That's my guess at least, I also accept I have no idea what I'm talking about here.

[mcswell]

> if you can demonstrate comprehension in the absence of this structure, > I think you can make the case that it is optional and therefore may not > rely on it.

One kind of example demonstrating the importance of structure is wh-movement (the appearance of a word like 'who' or 'what' at the beginning of a sentence, when the argument it is asking about would be somewhere deeper inside the structure). For instance "Who did John say that Mary had a fight with __?" (I've represented the position of the argument with the __.) It's been known since the 60s that there are lots of constraints on wh-movement, e.g. *"Who did John say he knew the person who had a fight with __?" (vs. the non-wh-movement sentence "John said he knew the person who had a fight with Bill.")

[foldr]

>the meaning of multi-words isn't the result of structure or word order

Surely the 'word order' part must be a mistake here? Clearly word order influences the interpretation of sequences of English words. As for structure, the paper presents no evidence whatever that structure is not involved in the interpretation.

>many idioms for example aren't interpreted literally

This is just the definition of what an idiom is, not any kind of insight.